"Good Morning" in Swedish is pronounced "GO MORON".
For the next two years, that's what I'll be greeted with each morning, and I intend to follow orders.
Group was nice, old friends Stina and Annika, and several new friends.
Skiing with a 15kg pack is hard, I fell over often.
Nice display of northern lights to welcome us on Friday night. We skied a few km, then set up camp in a forest.
Sat morning, we skied up into the mountains, set up camp around lunchtime, toured around the area sat arvo and sunday morning, then packed up after lunch on sunday and skied back down the hill.
Sunday arvo we went to a resort in a nearby town, had a swim, bubble-pounding spa, and a sauna - perfect way to relax after a hard weekend skiing.
My probable state on the weekend is best expressed in song format:
I'm going cross country skiing (a bit brett of me I know... but I gotta make full use of the snow while it lasts) in Marsfjällen, locale of a highly enjoyable hiking trip in the autumn. Some of the same peeps will be present too.
I expect it to be great fun. The timing, however, is a bit poor, since I'll miss the Ansu's (aka Crabman's) farewell party, he's back home to Germany on Saturday. The last few months a bunch of us have been having semi-regular poker nights, and tonight was the last one, with a bit of farewell fika thrown in for good measure. His farewell promises to be a big one... shame to miss it.
Shameless vanity plug: join facebook, so I feel like I have more friends!
Updated Update: My Åre pictures, of which there are not many, are here
Update (Holding Content): for those not on Brett's email list, I provide this little nugget of gold form GodTube.com:
Marjukka (pronounced Maryuka) and Kukka(burra). Dave and Michael behind them.
Me carving it up like a demtel steak knife:
Twas hard to ski and hold the camera steady, but it came out alright I reckon. Also featuring Dangerous Dave's little 180.
Åre var jättekul! More pics and videos are coming soon, but Robert has already put up some photos here.
Worst things first: it was pretty windy all weekend so the chairlifts to the top were closed, and some pistes were windblown and icy, but in through the trees there was heaps of fresh powder, and we spent a lot of time in the park doing jumps and rails (okay, I didn't do rails, but some people did).
Best thing though was our group. I went with three friends, Garnet and Amanda from Canada, and Michael from Germany, but met several other friends of theirs and randoms and we formed a group of around ten people from Finland, Germany, Slovenia, Canada, England, even a couple of Swedes!
The Finnish girls were mad as cut snakes, as one would expect, but they were outdone by a pair of Belgian girls, non-skiers, came up just for the party night... indescribeable. They out-Guro'd Guro.
On Sunday morning, Divin' I-vind the Third (c.f. Reef Trip '06, Norway Sept '06, French Alps Feb '07) put in a sterling effort, partying until 8am at his student society in Trondheim (Jo&Jer... remember that confusing building?), going straight to the train station, up to Åre, and skiing with us in the arvo on zero sleep.
Garnet gets the prize for best stack of the weekend. Down a very steep part, Marjukka (a Finnish Girl) cut in front of him, he lost control went bouncing arse over tit for about 30 metres, I was coming down next to him watching him barrel down doing at least 6 or 7 complete cartwheel/somersaults before coming to a rest. On about his 4th flip, Marjukka had a sympathy stack, doing 2 or 3 somersaults - which normally would have been very impressive but paled in comparison to Garnet's, much to her chagrin. I wish I had it on video, best stack I've ever seen.
All my bones and muscles are now aching, but it was a sensational weekend.
Forgive me if this is old news (it's not exactly talk of the town in Sverige) but I just found out the Abbertons have made a Bra Boys doco-movie!
The scene at the end where it says "Narrated by Russell Crowe" was filmed just up the road from my old place.
Some of you may have met Gilad? Hal's mate, from a couple years below us in EE, lived the next building up from us in the bra? He recently bought Koby Abberton's house, and Koby invited him to come to the premiere. He says its pretty cool movie. I still think they're a bunch of brainless thugs, but I do wanna see it.
Somehow I doubt if it'll get a wide release in Sweden, but it would be cool to see it with a bunch of Swedes just to say "I used to live there". The bra looks like a pretty rough area in the trailer! Geez, it's not like it's Redfern, eh brett?
Anyway, tomorrow I'm off skiing again, to Åre, the site of my first European ski experience a year ago this day.
Seen here on ladder night. This is Sweden, socialist utopia, everyone gets a fair go, even ladders!
On Saturday I went to Scharinska, the homebase of many fine Umeå bands such as the Sahara Hotnights and the International Noise Conspiracy, who I just found both come from here. This weekend it was Captain Murphy, a nice group of well-dressed young men who played rock'n'roll music for us. Kinda a You Am I vibe if I'm feeling generous, or something between Jet and The Strokes if I'm not. But it was a small room filled by about a hundred people, so pretty much anything is enjoyable. Check out the song "I belong to the girls" on their myspace, it's quite reasonable.
Scharinska itself is an old building with chandeliers and columns everywhere and mosaiced walls - quite a cool vibe.
Something less cool happened on Sunday, when I played squash with what in retrospect must have been an improperly cleaned contact lens. My eye went all swollen and red and oh the pain! "Thousand little red men in my eye, put down your firey axes", I cried, "I'm willing to listen to your demands". But its seemed their only wish was continued pain for me, so I sent them a great tidal wave of salty water, which quelled the revolution somewhat, but even this morning there were lingering troublemakes still hiding out in the dusty cellars of the townsfolk, occaisionally coming out to dynamite railway bridges, so I went to the doctor and got some industrial strength antibacterial eye drops - time to rain down on the little bastards with a program of indiscriminate chemical warfare!!
In other news, Fancy Pants and Old Mate have locked in their visit dates for May, and Dickman and Anita should be coming by around August. And I just submitted this for a conference in Noo Orleans.
Calm a llama down Calm a llama down Deep down in the ocean blue like a barnacle Sitting in a tight place Laughing like a monkey arm, pulling like a China boy Carraway carraway carraway noise Boing, chika masala Boing, chika masala Oh tooth tooth
Erik and Maria, two of my best mates here in Umeå, just punched out a kid, her name is Kajsa (pronounced Kaisa, sorta):
The pares, whom Jo and Jeremy may remember from our windy bbq at the lake:
They hosted a fika (afternoon tea) on Saturday for a few friends to meet her:
Aww, innit cute?
On Saturday night I went to corridor party at a mates place, and from there we went to a surreally huge corridor party elsewhere. A corridor party takes place in a "student corridor", which is student accomodation where each person has a small room with a bathroom, but there is a shared kitchen/dining area. There's generally such a party every week somewhere or other.
The first one was pretty normal, just yer average party at a mates place, good clean fun. The second one was something else entirely, and in fact seems kinda dreamlike in retrospect. It took up the whole apartment block, there were about 400-500 people there, one kitchen was converted into a dance floor with a DJ, another into a bar where girls in hawaiian-style bikinis and grass skirts served drinks and hot dogs. It was more like a club than a house party, except that it took place in the corridors of an apartment block.
Practically everyone I know in this town was there, but it was bizarre, you kept walking up the corridor, seeing someone you know coming the other way, saying "hey howyagoin!" and then continuing past them. I think it was something about being in a corridor, traditionally a place of thoroughfare rather than sationarity, you subconsciously feel you're supposed to be going somewhere, so you walk up to the end of the corridor, think "now where was I going again?" turn around and walk back the other way, saying hi again to 25-30 people along the way.
Today (sunday) was a beautiful day, blue sky, bright sun reflecting off the snow, toasty warm (peaked at 2 degrees!). My neighbours and I sat out on our shared balcony lapping up the sun, eating ice cream and generally being happy. In the arvo I met up with some of last night's revellers for fika and debrief at Kårhus Villan, an old building on the university grounds with big comfy couches where med students bake cakes and serve coffee to raise money for their student society. One of my neighbours is a med student, and as I was going there she recommended I try some rich chocolate and coconut balls they serve, which she referred to as "niggerballs". Just so you know, Australia doesn't have a monopoly on casual racism!
